1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle positioning apparatus and method, and more particularly, to a vehicle positioning apparatus and method in which information necessary for positioning a vehicle is sent from the vehicle after successful authentication of the vehicle and received by the terminal unit to give the user positional information about the vehicle and also positional information about a vehicle is sent to a terminal unit from a device installed on board in a vehicle in response to an access made from the terminal unit having a peculiar ID code assigned thereto via a public telephone network, thereby permitting to position a vehicle simply and easily while assuring a sufficient security thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Heretofore, various car positioning methods have been proposed to permit car users to easily position their cars parked in any very wide parking lots.
Some typical examples of such methods will be considered below. One of them is to turn on the light of a user""s car or sound the car horn in response to operation of a remote controller by the user. The other is to use a portable GPS (global positioning system) (as disclosed in the Japanese Published Unexamined Application No. 84092-1994).
However, the above conventional car positioning methods have problems to solve for practical use.
That is, the car positioning method by car light illumination or car horn sounding will disturb the neighbors in some cases and cannot position the car depending on the structure or scale of the parking lot.
Also, the conventional portable GPS systems are large and their operations will bother the users very much. In any case, if the user lost or misses his own portable device such as the remote controller, anyone having found the lost portable terminal may possibly use the portable device to position the car, which will compromise the car security.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to overcome the above-mentioned drawbacks of the prior art by providing a vehicle positioning apparatus and method for positioning a vehicle simply and easily while assuring a high security thereof.
According to a first aspect of the present invention as defined in claim 1 which will be set forth later, there is provided a vehicle positioning apparatus which can be carried on by a user, including an authentication means for authenticating the user to provide a result of authentication, a remote controlling means for requesting a predetermined main unit to send information necessary for finding a vehicle of the user, a receiving means for receiving the necessary information for finding the vehicle, and a providing means for providing positional information about the vehicle to the user, according to the necessary information for finding the vehicle received by the receiving means.
As in the above, the vehicle positioning apparatus is simply constructed to assure easy positioning of the user""s vehicle with a sufficient security by providing only the correctly authenticated user with the positional information from the main unit.
According to the second aspect of the present invention as defined in claim 6, there is provided a vehicle positioning method including the steps of authenticating a user by a terminal unit carried on by the user to provide a result of authentication, requesting a predetermined main unit to send information necessary for positioning a vehicle of the user, and receiving the necessary information for positioning the vehicle and providing positional information about the vehicle to the user.
As in the above, the vehicle positioning method is very simple and permits to easily locate the user""s car with a sufficient security.
According to the third aspect of the present invention as defined in claim 7, there is provided a vehicle positioning device installed on board in a vehicle to send positional information about the vehicle to a terminal unit having a particular Identification code assigned thereto in response to an access made from the terminal unit via a public telephone network.
In the vehicle positioning apparatus, the positional information about the user""s vehicle can be served only in response to an access from an authorized terminal unit such as an authorized user""s mobile telephone. Thus, the vehicle positioning apparatus simply constructed as in the above assures to easily locate the user""s vehicle with a sufficient security.
According to the fourth aspect of the present invention as defined in claim 10, there is provided a vehicle positioning method in which in response to an access made from a terminal unit having a peculiar Identification code assigned thereto via a public telephone network, positional information about a vehicle is sent from a device installed on board in the vehicle to the terminal unit. In the vehicle positioning method, easy location of the user""s vehicle can be assured with a sufficient security.
These objects and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments of the present invention when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.